Comment by jarek-foksa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jarek-foksa | Hacker News Reader

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https://boxy-svg.com - vector graphics editor similar to Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator.

Both client- and server-side code is written with vanilla JavaScript. Since I'm targeting only Electron and modern Chromium-based browsers I can use latest web technologies without any transpilers or preprocessors. I'm using mostly raw DOM APIs without any abstraction layers.

Third-party services:

- Firebase (database, storage, hosting, cloud functions)

- Paddle (payments, taxes)

- Algolia (instant search)

- ProtonMail (regular emails)

- SendGrid (transactional emails)

I have been using Firebase, Paddle and Algolia for several years now. So far I had zero problems with them and the overall experience was great (intuitive dashboards, good documentation, clean APIs).

I only wish there was a service that would allow me to easily build Electron packages for multiple operating systems and architectures - currently it is a mess that requires multiple virtual machines with a ton of dependencies.

I don't know a whole lot about Electron and friends, but saw this project the other day that does new builds with a Github action: https://github.com/davidaf3/csgo-tracker/blob/master/.github... maybe it'd be useful to look at?

Thanks, I will check it out. I didn't know GitHub Actions could be configured to run on proprietary operating systems.

Hi, I'm the author of the repo. I use electron-builder [0] to build my Electron app. IIRC there are a few CLI flags to build for different operating systems without needing to run it in the target OS. So you don't even need to use GitHub Actions.

[0] https://www.electron.build/

I'm using electron-builder too. Things get more complicated when you want to publish your app on different app stores.

I was unable to build a Snap Store package for arm on an amd64 machine. Canonical provides their own remote build service, but proprietary projects can't use it yet.

In order to build a package for distribution on the Mac App Store I have to use macOS with XCode installed and signing certificates stored in the system keychain. Uploading the package to the app store also must be done with macOS-specific tools. At least it is possible to build multi-arch packages, so I don't need two separate machines as it is the case with snaps.

Windows 10 with Windows SDK is required to build an appx package for distribution on the Microsoft Store.

Finally! one that can import PDFs, a must have for tuning. For example, "Print to PDF" from the browser and import it in an editable format.

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My question, as you made it a PWA, why bother with Electron?

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BTW, I bet you have it tasked, but having a shortcut profile selector with AI and Inkscape ones would help.

> Finally! one that can import PDFs, a must have for tuning. For example, "Print to PDF" from the browser and import it in an editable format.

To be honest Boxy SVG is not the best tool for manipulating PDFs. It should be able to import most PDF files as it is using Mozilla's PDF.js library under the hood, but once you import the file you have to deal with limitations of the SVG format such as lack of support for multi-page documents, flowed texts and forms.

> My question, as you made it a PWA, why bother with Electron?

Electron-based apps feel much more native than PWAs on macOS, for example you can make the app use native menubar and tabs. The gap between PWAs and Electron/native apps is probably going to be closed at some point in the future: https://fugu-tracker.web.app/

> BTW, I bet you have it tasked, but having a shortcut profile selector with AI and Inkscape ones would help.

I will try to implement this functionality later this year, it is tracked on https://boxy-svg.com/ideas/42/keyboard-shortcuts-presets

Thanks for the reply. I imported a PDF with forms and it drew them fine. In Inkscape I also have to clear the kernings, and reflow. It's not perfect, but it's a good starting point. Figma and XD can't import PDFs at all.

Is Firefox just too far different from Chrome to support. I have become pretty anti-Chrome lately.

Last time I checked Firefox didn't support Native File System API, Constructable Stylesheets API and HTML Dialog API which are used extensively by Boxy SVG.

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